Shawn Michaels Recalls Mind Games Match With Foley, His Evolution as a Character

– Shawn Michaels was on Edge and Christian’s Pod Of Awesomeness late last month and talked about his match with Mick Foley at In Your House: Mind Games in 1996. Highlights are below:

On not having worked with Mick Foley before their Mind Games match: “For me, the most important thing about being in the ring with a guy is getting his timing or knowing if his timing is the same as yours. Do you know what I mean? And sometimes, if it isn’t, you’ve got to find that, and adjust to that, and work around that. All of that stuff in the ring in a match for the first time, to find that with somebody the very first time when you get in there, you know, the sooner you can cross that off your list or do that first whatever, then you go, ‘okay.’ And to know that, because that’s one issue you no longer have to worry about. You know he’s going to be there. You know he’s going to do this. You know you’re going to turn, your timing, and all of that. You’re going to be there. The next thing is going to be going on. And that can’t be overstated because if it isn’t, it stands out.”

On the importance of the match for him: “Coming off of the ‘boyhood dream’ [storyline] and the sort of sterilization that they did with me, and again, nobody’s fault, but it wasn’t the rough attitude guy that sort of got me there and this was a huge kick in the pants for the HBK character at that time with that kind of gritty, tough type of match.”

On leaving the monitors on the table for that bumb: “Truth be told, much like the Ladder Match and everything else, like, the Ladder Match was done with one ladder at WrestleMania, no backups, no nothing, this is where people learned, ‘Hey, someone’s going to get hurt! Clear that stuff.’ Like the ladder, this was sort of the beginning of all of that kind of stuff. And, me, personally, I’ve been a guinea pig for a lot of them. I mean, so that’s how you sort of find out. Thankfully, none of us got hurt.”

On his evolution as a character during that era: “You were still evolving. And, heck, I know I was. You’re still evolving as who you are. You’re still trying to figure it out. I was champion for whatever, I was still trying to [figure it out]. I mean, I think my match with [Vader] was the first time I can recall stomping for the superkick and you’re the champion, so you’re still figuring out new ways to develop and grow and evolve. It’s not a knock, but I don’t know how many people are doing that. People are sort of set in their sequence, their distinguished moveset of whatever and, heck, we were still trying to grow in a main event of a pay-per-view. Do you know what I mean? It was a constant effort for character development so to speak, as opposed to being set in that and just moving forward. And again, it’s not to be critical of anybody, it’s just sometimes when I watch [WWE programming], it’s just people are pretty set on who it is they are and I don’t know if that’s the most positive way of going about doing it. You want to continue to grow as a character, to stretch and have more range and have more emotion and have more everything because once you do sort of get settled in it, then it becomes repetitive, right?”